In 2016, I was hiking a little state park that was close to where we lived up in northern Indiana. I was preparing for a section hike that I was going to do, the Appalachian Trail. Just simple, four days backpacking. And I knew I wasn't in shape, and so I was trying to work on it as best I could in flat northern Indiana. All right?
And so I had this big pack on, as much weight as I could get. And I'm hiking out through this mountain bike trail that you could hike backwards the normal direction. Right. It was about eight miles long. It gave me a good test.
And so I go out there one morning, I'm doing this, and I get to this spot in this hike where I just kind of get overwhelmed by nature. All right? Like, it's this flat area, and it has these switchbacks in the trail, and so you can kind of see for a long ways. You're in this area for a while, but it's. It's completely covered by trees now.
It's open underneath. All the limbs were up high. And so you felt like you were in an open field, and yet at the same time, you're in this canopy of incredible trees. And I'm hiking through this space, and then suddenly I hear this sound behind me, and a old man runs up next to me. Okay.
He's jogging this mountain bike trail backwards. And he had. He had previously hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, and he was a pastor in the area. I'd heard of him. And the two of us started talking, had a good conversation.
He walks with me for a while, and then he prays over me as we're hiking through this space. And when he says amen, he says, see ya, and takes off, leaves, and eventually leaves me again, alone in this space. And then I suddenly feel this sense of God, overwhelmed by the environment, overwhelmed by the place that I'm in. I just find myself in an unscheduled moment of worship. Is that worship?
A few years before that, I was a student minister at a church in Missouri, and we had taken a group of kids to a CIY conference. And there was this night. I can't tell you the year, I can't tell you what night of the week it was. I can just remember this moment sitting with my students. There's 1,500 to 2,000 students in the arena.
Worship is loud. Like kids, like, okay, all these kind of things are just hitting all the senses. And in the middle of this, I felt this Holy Spirit movement within me that tells me to pray for the student next to me. And so I lean over and I begin praying over a young man who has gone into ministry. In fact, he's now the youth minister at that church, which is.
Is really, really cool. But I remember praying over him, just kind of whatever I felt like. Like I was being led to pray for him. And I. I do that. When I say amen, I felt this Holy Spirit nudge within me, tell me to tell him to do the same thing for the person next to him and to just kind of pass it down.
And I, you know, I do that, and I'm thinking, wow, that's kind of cool. And then I felt this nudge from God. Do it again. And so I tap the shoulder of my student who's sitting in front of me, and I. They turn around, I pray over them, and then I pray over another one.
And this goes off for, you know, 15 minutes. I look up and I see my group just praying over each other. I see my group worshiping, I. Loud music, all this stuff. And again, I find myself just overwhelmed in the presence of God.
An incredible moment, memorable to me is that worship.
Just about every single week in this room, something happens that captures my attention. It can happen during communion. It can happen during the message. It can, usually, for me, happens during worship and song. As we are singing together, there's usually a line or there's a melody, or there's something that causes something to catch in the back of my throat or something that makes me just kind of pause and I forget where the song's going.
And I just kind of get locked in on a few words as I begin dwelling on what's happening in that moment and thinking through whatever it is that has just been sung is that worship.
Worship can look like a lot of different things. And so the goal this morning is that we're going to try to break it down and make it uncomplicated. Let's start with some simple questions. Who worships? The quick answer to that is, yes, everyone.
Everyone worships. Everyone worships something. In fact, everyone worships some things plural, right? Some people worship their kids. Some people worship money.
Some people worship Kentucky basketball. Some people worship Texas football. Some people worship politics or Hallmark Christmas movies, right? We all worship lots of things, different things. And yet all of us probably also has that one thing that seems to be above everything else, that one thing that is important enough.
It's kind of the king of the things that we worship. It's the Dominator. It's the one that overrules. It's the thing that causes me to sacrifice what I would worship elsewhere for the sake of that thing instead. We all have something like that.
The Bible says the day is coming when that thing will be Jesus. Philippians chapter two says, at the name of Jesus, every knee is going to bow in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue is going to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. What's really cool about this verse is that regardless of how you live, regardless of how you choose to worship or what you choose to worship in this life, a day is coming when everyone is going to proclaim the truth of Jesus. And so that puts us in a position where we can either volunteer to worship him or a day is coming when you won't have a choice. Now, Jesus followers, we choose to volunteer, right?
We're not waiting for some day where we're forced to worship. Instead, we do it now. Jesus followers are called to declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Those who have been redeemed by Jesus and have received his spirit spirit can truly worship Him. Now, that's what John 4 tells us.
In fact, Jesus in that passage where he's speaking says that the people who do that are true worshipers, that they worship in spirit and in truth. And we're, we're going to spend some time coming back to that passage multiple times. But worship is the privilege and the calling of God's people. It's something that if you're a Jesus far, if you claim to follow Jesus, it means that you worship. That's who worships.
And yet that invitation is open to all the bigger question, bigger than just who worships. I mean, we all worship something. The more important question is who is being worshiped. It's about God himself. True worship is about recognizing God.
And specifically what you're recognizing is his position. You're recognizing who he is and at the same time recognizing who, who you are. And then you're responding appropriately. There's a word for that in the New Testament. It's in the Greek, it's proskine.
And it means to bow down. And it has this idea of like kissing the ring of the one of authority. It's that image. It's the person who's falling on their face in the throne room of a great king. Which means that we're going to run into some conflicts this morning.
In fact, I've got four conflicts for us. Our first one today is that we don't always think of worship in that pros caneo type of way, the bow down type of way. Most of the time when we think of worship, we equate it with emotions like love or peace or joy. We like to talk about the things that we get out of worship and the way that it makes us feel. And there's validity to that because sometimes how we worship God is, is going to make us feel something good.
But we talk about worship sometimes as if that's the target, as if that's the goal and that's not the goal, that's not what it should be. That's not the starting place, it's not the best barometer, it's not true worship or good worship. The better emotional connection of worship is the word fear. It's the reverence type of a fear. That kind of an idea, it puts you in the presence of God.
When we worship and I think sometimes we take for granted how scary of a place that is. It's a terrifying thing to be in God's presence. There's a story in the Old Testament, Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah in chapter six of his book finds himself in the throne room of God. He has this incredible vision and he kind of explains what he's seeing. But then like also at the same time, when he realizes what's going on, his response is woe is me.
As in like, I don't belong here. As in like I shouldn't be here. As in like I'm scared, I'm exposed. This is so far beyond me. I don't deserve this, I don't belong here.
He says other things, like I'm undone. He says I'm ruined.
Being in the presence of God is a scary place.
The posture in the Bible that most references worship is not hands lifted high, it's head bowed low. It's even the picture of falling down prostrate on the ground before your God. One of the goals of worship is to come into the presence of God. But when you come into the presence of God, it doesn't feel warm and fuzzy. And so when you find yourself in the presence of God, don't you dare take it lightly and don't you dare make it about yourself.
It's dangerous. I mean, how ridiculous would it be if you were invited into the throne room of a great, almighty, all powerful king? And at the same time, he's not just all powerful, but he's also benevolent, he's gracious, he's also loving. And you find yourself in his presence, you're able to spend time with him. And then afterwards, as you Walk away.
You're like, eh, I wasn't feeling it.
It's not about you.
Bowing and serving isn't about you. It's not about your pleasure. It's about an expression of the greatness of another. True worship is recognizing God's position and then recognizing that it isn't our position. And fear is that better barometer of worship than peace or joy.
Because fear places God on His throne where he belongs. And that's where he truly reigns in our life. And so who worships? Who is worthy of worshiping? Well, everyone worships.
And God is the one worth worshiping. And His Son Jesus will one day be worshiped by everyone, one way or another. It would be wise to begin worshiping Jesus sooner rather than later. More questions like what is worship and how do we worship? Those are closely related questions.
There's other words in the Greek, in the New Testament that talk about worship. It's words that mean things like to bless or to glorify or to praise. And these words all have to do with words. They're actions that are performed by the things we say. We bless people and we bless God through words.
We glorify people and we glorify God through words. We praise people and we praise God with words. And so worship looks like giving words to someone as a gift. Worship is proclaiming truths of God and celebrating what it is that he has done. Now that means that there's a little bit of freedom in what that can potentially look like.
It means that there's lots of different things that we do with words such as prayer. Prayer can be a form of worship. It's where we speak to God, where we share what it is that we want to say to him, as far as celebration of him, or what we want to share of ourselves to Him. Singing can be a form of worship. It's often what we think of when we hear that word worship.
But it's not limited to that preaching and teaching. What I'm doing right now is a form of worship. It's a way that worship can happen. It's where we proclaim the truths of God. And that can happen in a corporate setting like this.
It can also happen in an individual setting. If you're talking to someone of God and sharing with someone the truth of who he is. That is a form of worship can be worship, but so can listening and hearing the word of God. What you are doing right now is a participation in worship. When we read our Bibles, when we read books that are written of Jesus and explain those Things for us, even when we read journal, if we're writing down those things, all of these things are potential acts of worship.
But that brings us to our second point of conflict. Because worship isn't just the movement of our lips and forming words. It's not just the physical expression of how we want to worship or what we're saying as worship. Worship is deeper than that. It's the expression of our spirits.
It's not a physical thing, it's a spiritual thing. We saw that just a moment ago in John 4, where it says worship requires spirit and truth. Which means that worship can exist in other forms that aren't in spirit and aren't in truth. It means that there's ways that we can participate in worship that aren't real, that aren't authentic. There are counterfeit versions of worship, there are knockoff versions, brands of worship.
And so worship is something that we can fake. It's possible to go through all the motions and not actually worship that there's no connection to the spirit, no connection to truth. You could raise your hands and sing. That doesn't mean it's worship. You could just be at a concert.
It means that you could teach or that you could preach or that you could listen to a teacher, you could listen to a preacher and not worship. It could just be a classroom.
True worship is connected to the Holy Spirit working within us. And because worship should be in truth, it means that we could also lie about our worship. We could fake worship like we just mentioned. That's a form of lying. But we could also worship false versions of Jesus and be no closer to God.
We could proclaim things of him that are not true and then worship them as if they were true. And it has no value of worship.
And I can confidently tell you that it isn't in your best interest to enter the throne room of an all powerful, although benevolent, loving king. If there's any sense of false intentions or lying words, it's a dangerous place to be.
Now we call this time here every Sunday morning. We call this a worship service. This is how we do worship. And every part of this service is designed as worship. This room we call the adult worship center.
And we take a moment in every single service where we take communion and we give an offering. And those are ways that we worship. We celebrate what Jesus did for us and we worship him through the taking of elements that remind us of his sacrifice. And then we respond with a gift of gratitude where we give something back proving that he is our king. Preaching is a way that we worship.
What we're doing right now is an opportunity for worship. It's where we speak those truths of God. It's where we listen to the truth of God. It's where we elevate God to our full attention. Prayer is a way that we worship, where we proclaim the praises of God with our lips and with our innermost being.
Prayer is that moment where we walk into the throne room of God and share with him what's on our mind. But maybe the most common one, the one that we think of the most when we talk about worship, is singing. And for some of you, that may be the one that you're least comfortable with.
I want to tell you, that doesn't mean that you opt out.
Could you imagine going to church and saying, well, I. I don't pray. That's not really for me. Choose not to. Or showing up and saying, you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna sing a bunch of songs with people.
But whenever they start preaching, like, that's not for me. I don't want someone to tell me what the Bible says. It's kind of a strange thing to opt out. Be strange to say, I'm not really comfortable eating bread and juice, drinking juice. That's weird.
That's not for me. I'm gonna opt out of that one. It's not how it is. It's the same with singing.
There's something important that's happening in this room when we're singing songs together. This isn't some sort of Disney Channel sing along.
This is where we have the opportunity to hear and speak truths of God that are not just truths of God, but they're also attached to a melody which helps make it planted deep within us. When we sing, we're participating in proclaiming truth. And we're not just participating with the people on stage who proclaim truth, but we are proclaiming truth to one another. It's what worship looks like. It's a key part of what we do.
I mean, even our announcement time, which is usually goofy, and we try to make jokes and we try to have fun, even that is a form of worship in the sense that we're trying to connect you to other opportunities to worship. And so we ask the question, what is worship and how do we worship? And we recognize that we can do it in lots of wrong ways. We can fake our worship. We can lie about worship.
We can see that there's all sorts of different forms and ways that worship can exist and how it can happen. But all of that means that two people can do the same thing this morning in this room. And one of them can worship in spirit and truth and the other one is fake and a liar. Do you believe that some of you are going to go home today having worshiped and some of you will go home today not having worshiped?
Maybe you talk with your family, maybe you share your perspectives or your thoughts from what happened at church. And maybe you compare and contrast the things that you liked or the things that you didn't like. I don't know. You could pick apart all the elements of our service if you wanted to. But whether or not you worshiped today is wholly on your own heart.
And so there's lots of forms of worship, but it's only true worship when it's done in spirit and in truth. And it can look like a lot of diverse things. And worship is also diverse. And when it happens we could ask the question, when do we worship? Worship is something that should happen.
When we gather, we typically think of a Sunday morning. But it's so much more than just our corporate gatherings. Here's a third point of conflict for us. Our lives outside of our worship gatherings validate our worship gatherings. And it's not the other way around.
Sometimes we think that if we worship on Sunday, well then we're good for the rest of the week. That somehow what we do on Sunday makes the rest of our week holy, when in fact it's the complete opposite. How you live Monday through Saturday validates how you show up in this room and what you do here. It legitimizes your worship in this place. And so that means that we should worship continually.
That's from Hebrews chapter 13 where it says through him let us then continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. Worship is the lifestyle of the Jesus follower. It's not something that you can step into and then step back out of whenever you want. Worship should be a part of the Jesus followers life, just like breathing in Romans. Paul tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices.
And that word sacrifice, sacrifice there, this is the Greek word for. And that Greek word is attached to the idea of worship. And it carries with it this idea that worshiping God happens through how we serve others. It's called to be different from the world around us for the sake of the world around us. And Paul calls it our spiritual act of worship.
It's kind of like we talked about last week. You can claim and say that you love God in all sorts of different ways, but if you aren't loving people, then your love for him doesn't really exist.
That's kind of the picture we're getting here. Your life and your choices and your actions are also acts of worship. Paul brings this up again in a different letter to a different church, the Corinthians. He says, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Whatever you do, even to the most basic or mundane things, is an opportunity for you to bring honor to God.
It's an opportunity for worship.
You can take this even further. If we're going to say that you're going to worship always and continually, it means that you're going to worship in times when you don't feel like worshiping, when life isn't going the way that you want, when life is hard or heartbreaking or difficult. Habakkuk puts this really well. This is Old Testament prophecies, prophetic writing stuff, but it's. It's powerful.
He says, though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there's no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, essentially he's saying, though I have nothing, even when life falls apart, even when everything works against me, even when everything falls the way the complete opposite, I wish it would fall. When everything is awful, I will rejoice in the Lord. I'm gonna be joyful in God, my Savior. Worship isn't going to be dictated by what's happening in our lives or what's happening to us or what we feel like. Worship is a decision to honor God always.
And so worship isn't something that you pick up when you walk into this building, and it's not something that you put back down when you leave this building. Worship is what the Jesus follower does continually. Which means we should probably ask that question, where do we worship then? Because if we're always worshiping wherever or whatever we're doing whenever we can, if it's always constant and continual, then it probably means that we're also taking worship with us everywhere that we go. And that would be correct.
We mentioned this passage a couple times, John, chapter four. We pulled out one verse. The larger context is that Jesus is talking to a Samaritan woman who's very confused about what's happening in this conversation with Jesus. She's caught off guard. She can tell he's a prophet, and she's like, look, look, we worship Samaritans.
We worship on this mountain. And we think that's right. But you know, Jesus, you and your people, the Jewish people, they say that that's not right and that we should worship in Jerusalem. Which one is right? Where should we worship?
And so Jesus answers her with this. He says, woman, believe me, a time is coming when we will worship the Father. Neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. Says you Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know.
For salvation is from the Jews. That's Jesus saying he's the one bringing salvation. Yet a time is coming and has now come, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the spirit and in truth.
So when Jesus is walking the earth, there's this great debate about where are you supposed to worship? And Jesus says, all the answers are wrong. The place where you worship can be found not in some physical location, but it's in the soul of the worshiper. Which brings us to our fourth point of conflict. We think worship happens when I go to church.
It happens there, in that place, as if this place is some sort of a uniquely sacred ground.
But worship happens everywhere I go, at all times. Which means worship looks like praise and thanksgiving and prayer and hearing and responding to the word, singing and giving. It also looks like serving. It also looks like obeying everywhere that we go.
In Acts, chapter 16, there's a story of Paul and Silas who end up in jail. The unique part of that story is the two of them singing praises and hymns while in jail. They worship everywhere we go. I've been a pastor for over 20 years now. I can tell you that some of the most powerful worship services I've ever been a part of have taken place in hospital rooms.
Worship does happen on that lonely hike in the woods. And it happens in the middle of a thousand of students with a loud band.
Worship happens in here every week. And worship also happens in your car and in your kitchen. Can happen on your bathroom floor. Worship happens in your workplace. It happens at lunch.
It happens in bed. It happens on the back porch.
Because worship is continual and it's everywhere that you go.
Maybe the most important question in all of this is, why do we worship?
And there's a simple answer to that. We worship because God commands it. He does, and that's reason enough.
But don't be distracted by the fact that it's not just that he commands it, he also deserves it because he is God. And all praise and all honor is due him. His throne is above every other throne. There is no one. There is nothing outside of him.
And his authority, he is the creator of all things. Everything that exists, everything that you can think, everything that you can see is his belongs to Him. He lords over all of it. And that's enough. That's enough reason to worship Him.
But beyond that, he loves you. Even more reason. And he doesn't have to, but he does. Talked about that again last week. And so the one whose throne is above every other throne, the one who has ultimate authority and dominion over all things, the one who has created everything that you can think, see, or imagine and everything that continues to be created, he's also the one who became man so that he could live where we live and so he could do what we do and so that he could show us the way to Him.
He is the One who died for our sake, the One who proved love.
And so we worship partly because what other option is there?
He commands it, and he deserves it. And he deserves it. And he deserves it.
Now, I suppose you could blow him off or ignore him your entire life, and it won't change an ounce of who he is. It won't change the fact that the day is coming when you will worship. Because he has always been and he will always be. He has always been worthy of our praise, and he will always be worthy of our praise. The real issue today when we talk about worship is not really about God.
It's about you. It's about me. And the issue is whether or not we will respond. And it's not about what I like in worship, and it's not about how I like to worship. And it's not about where I like to worship or when I like to worship.
It's about giving him what he deserves in spirit and in truth. And if we can do that, well, then we can worship.
I hope over the next few moments you worship. Let's pray.
God, I pray that your word would speak truth to our hearts.
God, I pray that we would respond appropriately. God, I pray that we would see you as you are. We would see ourselves as we are. That we would give you what you deserve and we would give you what you've demanded. And, God, I pray that our spirits and that truth would be in deep alignment in these next few moments as we worship.
Amen.